Tag: future

Historiography at work

Books and Reading, Commentary, education, History, In the News, politics, This and That, Writing and Blogging, Writing101

Historiography is the study of History.    It was one of my favorite mandatory seminars as a grad student at the University of Akron.

One of my friends and cohorts here in Blog Land, raised a very interesting point in  a comment on how the Historians of 100 years from now would treat the scenario in rage now of the Great Republican Plan to Obliterate the Obama Presidency.    Obviously all of us reading this will have no interaction whatsoever in the future century.   Who knows how the History of our age will be preserved, or how it will be reported to future generations.    The History of the Present hasn’t happened yet.

The Trump-Obama factionalism is too multi-faceted to tackle here.   However, the question is a good one, and leads me to ponder the basic differences between Now and Then…meaning past and future coverage of historical events.     There can be two designations here: Paper and Digital.

The most glaring difference is that what was written, published, in real books is that they were permanent.   Not necessarily the absolute authoritative sources on a given subject, but through a sort of consensus of opinions and research, and yes credentials.   In order to reach a thesis statement for a given publication, the writer presented his or her own ideas….something new, an alternate position.   There are always at least two sides to any proposition.

Here is a proposal that when it comes to Digital History, that which is presented over the internet by countless diverse sources, the information comes across only as permanent as the print-out a student or proponent, or indeed, opposition commentator, understands—or prefers to present as Truth or Falsehood—to their respective readership at any given time.

Digital History is much easier to alter, re-write, or inadvertently  distort  because of its fluidity…never permanent, always subject to a myriad of changes.    We see reports on the internet news channels… a statement made by an anchor person on CNN or Fox, MSNBC, BBC…at a given hour—that never airs again.

No one in their right mind for long will be able to watch Cable News constantly to keep up absolutely on the stream of information.    Remember when the internet was actually referred to as the Information Highway?   That was back in the 1980s, when major newspapers made the change from individual typewriters to the chaotic stream of News-all-the-Time.   Up-to-date means “constantly changing,” which isn’t necessarily a good thing.

 

What My Future Holds, In Six Words

Sometimes, The Daily Post, This and That, Writing and Blogging

[Daily Post Prompt for today:    Write a six-word story about what you think the future holds for you, and then expand on it in a post.]

Writing at last, I’m happy now.

Expansion on the title story:  “WHAT MY FUTURE HOLDS”

That short story, consisting of SIX WORDS, is self-explanatory–even if it does sound a bit like an epiteth that might be chiseled into my tombstone, IF I intended to have one.    But this tiny story, consisting of just six words, a comma, and a period…is anything but maudlin, rather a declaration of a specific stage and purpose in life.

Writing has been to me like a figurative carrot-on-a-stick , promising an eventual reward for years-served.    Although I have been writing all of my life, sometimes even getting paid for it, and have used writing skills in one form or another throughout my years as a news reporter, student, instructor, secretary, clerk, and so on…I always had the feeling that I was just biding my time waiting for the time when I could just Write.

All that time writing for “practical” purposes, I had a feeling of guilt…pressure and obligation to various pursuits which did not include Writing as I longed to do.

This all sounds terribly self-serving and contrite, and I confess that I would never be writing this post for a more general audience.  The people that I am aiming at are other Writers.  These–You are all Writers, real writers that live and breathe writing, and long to spend the most of their time at their keyboard–or with a pencil and paper.   No eye-rolling here…I firmly believe I am among kindred souls.

So what my future holds is…I hope…Writing.   I recently discovered poetry (again) and am absolutely in love with it!  I know that when I publish a post or a photograph, there are readers out there.  I’m not so vain as to believe that anyone waits anxiously every morning to see if I have produced something spectacular overnight.  Hardly.

But the thing about blogging in and with a community of other bloggers, is that everyone is in the same boat.   We write, and we want others to read our writing–but hey, if they don’t–well, it is Out There and available for Readers.

Once we hit the PUBLISH button, it is in the universe of myriad writers, our work there with the greatest writers who ever lived.  WHO IS THAT?  you ask?  Well, that is subjective of course.   One person’s Shakespeare is another’s Stephen King, or Dr. Suess.   There is no judgemental clicking of tongues when a physicist likes to read Mickey Spillane, or when a historian (like me) really, really enjoys reading Philippa Gregory’s version of the adventures of the English royalty.

I still have a LOT to write about.   Never at a loss for words, more build up inside my brain faster than it is possible to squeeze them out onto the computer screen.   So my future holds more of the same, but with a concentration and preferential option for the craft of Writing.   Obviously there is no time frame, my future could include twenty more years–or not.

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